


A Real Girl (And Always Has Been)

by im_the_king_of_the_ocean



Category: RWBY
Genre: Acceptance, Coming Out, F/F, Trans Female Character, Trans Penny Polendina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25593757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/im_the_king_of_the_ocean/pseuds/im_the_king_of_the_ocean
Summary: One day, while they're organizing the backroom files of Pietro's pharmacy, Ruby and Penny come across some old blueprints.
Relationships: Penny Polendina/Ruby Rose
Comments: 4
Kudos: 130





	A Real Girl (And Always Has Been)

The lightbulb in the overhead light of the pharmacy backroom flickers.Penny mentally writes herself a note to go out and purchase a replacement the next time they decide to take a break.She wonders if Ruby would like to join her.It’s a short walk to the convenience store at the end of the block, but perhaps Ruby could be convinced to go to the one a little further away?Just so they have more time to talk without having to think about categorizing all these files.

Penny does _understand_ her father’s decision to keep hard copy versions of his patient and project files.Paper is harder to hack and it’s easier to let something slip under the radar (like a patient not having either insurance or funding to properly pay for a prosthetic) without a digital record.It just frustrates her how little effort he seems to put into keeping them organized on a day-to-day basis.It would certainly make for less work now, at the yearly end-of-year tidying session, if he did.

Then again, _if_ he did, she and Ruby wouldn’t get this extra, non-huntress mission time to spend together.Penny glances over at her dear friend, whose sitting in the middle of a cluster of boxes, taking papers out of them, looking them over, and putting them in pre-determined stacks.

Penny frowns.It’s been a while since Ruby last gasped or exclaimed out loud, which is a little odd, since she assigned Ruby all of the inventions and projects files to do.

Technically speaking, Pietro _is_ a doctor with doctor-patient confidentiality between himself and anyone who seeks treatment from him, so he can’t just let anyone look at _those_ files.He does most of those himself, or trusts Penny with them, now that she’s been sworn in as an official ‘assistant’ to his practice (with her own confidentiality status to boot).

Well, that and it’s just plain _fun_ to listen to Ruby get excited when she reads over a particularly interesting project of Pietro’s.The flare of pride Penny feels toward her father and the joy she experiences over getting to witness Ruby be incredibly happy make for a very nice emotional mixture.

“Ruby?Is something the matter?”Penny probes gently.

Ruby’s head jerks up.“No!No, I, uh…I’m not sure I should have seen this?”She passes some blueprints over to Penny without making eye contact.

Penny takes the blueprints and looks down at them.“Oh.”Her circuitry seizes uncomfortably when she realizes what they are.She hasn’t seen them, _thought_ about them, in years.They haven’t mattered since…since the very beginning really. _It_ was one of the first things, if not the very first thing, she knew about herself.And, of course, Pietro had been more than willing to create her a new body to properly reflect her identity when she came out to him.

“Were you supposed to have a brother?”Ruby asks softly.

“No.”Penny chews on her bottom lip.Her innards (metaphorically) twist with fear.Back then, with the first scientists outside her father she’d met, the ones who _knew_ what was on this specific set of blueprints, it had been hard.They’d made compelling sounding arguments.Ones that denied her herself.She was designed a certain way, they’d said.Her aura was a transplant from her father’s, so therefore it proved she wasn’t really what she knew she is, they’d said.

Yet, Penny _knew._ She _knew_ herself, and Pietro had supported her (and swayed Ironwood), and that had been all that really mattered.Up to now.

Ruby had never given Penny any reason to believe she’d think along similar paths to those scientists, but still.There’s a _chance_.It’s why she always hesitated in telling Ruby.Sure, Ruby had handled her first secret surprisingly well, but that didn’t necessarily mean she’d handle the second one the same way.What if she didn’t?

Ruby accepted Penny as a girl _now_.Penny had decided that was all that mattered.An old secret could remain an old secret.

At least until it accidentally came to light during a tidying session.

“You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to,” Ruby tells Penny gently.“It’s none of my business.Seriously.”

Penny takes a breath.She looks down at the blueprints in her hands.Now, that they _are_ out in the open, she kind of does want to know Ruby’s response?She’ll wonder about it otherwise.Does Ruby genuinely support her or is she just politely not saying anything?That’s happened in the past too and, frankly, Penny prefers people to be upfront.It’s way more draining to continuously guess someone’s intentions than to know where they stand and interact with them accordingly.

“When my father first designed me,” Penny begins, and then stops.She gulps.“It, um, wasn’t as a girl.”She looks down at her hands, rubs one thumb over the palm of the other.“This was before I was…” ‘Born’ really isn’t the right word for her.It’s never felt like it to Penny.But how to explain the moment she first gained consciousness, awareness, to someone who came to life a very different way than her?Penny sighs.She doesn’t know, and this conversation is making her apprehensive enough as it is.“I had to learn a lot, in the beginning.Like a baby.I mean, I wasn’t a baby, but I, um…” she looks at Ruby, pleading with her eyes for Ruby to understand.

Ruby offers her a small, but comforting, smile.“No one knows everything at first.We all have to learn.Human, Faunus, _robot,_ alike.”

“Yes.”Penny exhales the breath she didn’t know she was holding.She checks in with her internal fans to ensure her temperature is at its normal setting (she doesn’t usually have to resort to breathing unless she manually has to cool herself down).“I…my father taught me a lot of things.Gender included.I realized I was— _am_ a girl.We changed my designs.The new designs went into my official file and these ones…”Penny shrugs.They’d needed to keep them because they held some of Pietro’s original concept work and who knows when or if they’d need that again (Pietro had when he rebuilt her after Beacon, but he’d also assured Penny when she woke up that he’d ignored everything that wasn’t the bare, functionality necessities from them).

Finally, Penny looks to Ruby.“Is that okay?”

Ruby maneuvers around the piles of boxes and papers strewn across the floor (the way she did a wiggly crab-walk would have made Penny laugh under different circumstances).Ruby settles next to Penny.“Of course it is.”Ruby goes in for a hug, pauses, her expression asking Penny for permission, and then hugs Penny astightly as possible when it’s granted.

“You’re a real girl, Penny.Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”


End file.
